The Plan, the Plan, the Plan…there is only so much you can plan! You could plan your way right into a straight jacket with a trip like this. The key for us was to start the planning early, have a foundation of hikes we wanted to experience, focus on a slower pace of travel, and keep to a budget of $75 per day.
The original backbone of our trip was 4, 1.5-2 week long hikes: the Alpamayo Circuit in Peru, the Walkers Haute Route in France, the GR20 on the island of Corsica, and the Torres Del Paine Circuit in Chile. As with any alpine adventure, the seasonal weather patterns dictate the best time to hike, and thus provided us with a general timetable. As the trip started to coalesce around these original hikes, we started finding even more incredible places to see and added in a traverse of New Zealand’s South Island, the Odessea Circuit in Northern Spain, and (after hearing about it from our Wilderness First Responder instructor) a hike to Everest Base Camp.
But you can’t hike forever…or maybe you can, but it is much more enjoyable when interspersed with tapas in Spain, absurd amounts of pizza in Italy, and fine wines in Croatia. What started as a hiking trip has turned into something much larger, something much more interesting and exciting. As with any “plan”, things change…people change, injuries happen (we are not as young as we once were), weather rolls in, and the best we can do is roll with the punches.
Click through the arrows below the map to follow along with our “Plan”: